The Washington Family Coat of Arms
Please Freepmail me to get ON or get OFF this RevWar/Colonial History/Gen. Washington ping list
Posted on 12/18/2005 6:11:47 AM PST by Pharmboy
One hundred sixty-four years before American-led Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to liberate France from the Germans, French troops landed in Newport, R.I., to help liberate the American colonies from the British.
With the powerful British Navy controlling the coast, the French Army, led by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, count of Rochambeau, marched inland on its way to meet George Washington's army and fight the British in Yorktown, Va. They won -- securing American independence -- but 5,000 Frenchmen died in battle.
"There were more Frenchmen killed at Yorktown than American revolutionaries," said Serge Gabriel, a Greenwich resident and native of France who has devoted the past five years of his life to commemorating Connecticut's role in his countrymen's historic march. Although no battles took place in Connecticut, it was one of nine states that the army marched through.
The memorializing is part of a national celebration that began last summer and ends next summer, marking the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown. As part of the celebration, Connecticut is working with the National Park Service to name the 600-mile, nine-state road the French and American armies followed, called the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, a national historic trail.
Gabriel, an American citizen who served in the French and American armies, serves as the Connecticut chairman of the project. In that volunteer role, he travels throughout the state, meeting with people in each of the 11 towns the French army passed through on its way south.
Collaborating with the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, he is working to erect outdoor historic panels in each town detailing their contributions to the war effort. Two panels have been erected, in Lebanon and East Hartford.
(Excerpt) Read more at stamfordadvocate.com ...
I take umbrage at this sentence. While the Continental Army may have been a "motley crew" early on, by 1778 they were a disciplined fighting unit.
What's next? 5000 statues of John Kerry?
The Washington Family Coat of Arms
Please Freepmail me to get ON or get OFF this RevWar/Colonial History/Gen. Washington ping list
I hear Kerry's ancestors were for the Revolution before they were against it...
Sounds like another excellent way to throw away taxpayer dollars.
Well, we'll have to disagree on that one. Anything that keeps the memory and ideas of the American Revolution alive is money well spent AFAIC...
Of course, I believe we have paid our debt to the French nation more-than-in-full during their misunderstandings with the Germans during the last century, and that it is now the French who are ingrateful debtors.
By our acknowledgement of, and continuing gratitude for, the valiant efforts of the King of France's army and navy in support of American independence, we show our own greatness and the mean spirit of the modern French.
Our town band, in the independence day ceremony, make a point of playing at least one famous French military march (this year Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse) to honor their contributions.
Thanks for filling in more of the story along with observations about Serge from your own CT point of view. It's contributions like yours that make FR the great site that it is.
Merrie Christmas to you and yours...
The schools should be keeping our ongoing history alive. The French can come up with the bucks for this project. We sent them Disney didn't we.
As much as I am one for the occasional dig at the French, they did make very important sacrifices and contributions to the United States,(be it many many years ago-but they are undeniable.)
I agree it is important to honor those sacrifices in a public way and to highlight the history of the American Revolution. Believe me it pains me to think about, considering the attitude of the current French leadership,but- without the aid of France in our early fighting years- where would we be?
Who knows.
And the favor has been repaid, twice in the past century. Next time, let the Germans keep France.
A "motley crew" that conducted itself so well, that it lost fewer troops at Yorktown. ;')
Thanks for the ping.
A side note re Yorktown: as an assignment of honor, Alexander Hamilton asked Washington (the General called him "Alex") if he could lead his brigade along the most dangerous route. Washington accorded him that honor. Hamilton was not only a genius but a great and valiant soldier.
Agreed...remember that quote from The Great War: "Lafayette, we are here."
Always my pleasure...
No argument there...although I would add is that they could have supported us with money, supplies, weapons and ammunition and stopped short of ground troops. But, when Washington was president, he came to dislike the French immensely (remember Citizin Genet, etc.), and Jefferson was the major apologist for the French in our new country.
From a plaque at Conanicut Battery:
"In the early 1770's - even before the Declaration of Independence - Narragansett Bay was the scene of frequent confrontations between the British Navy and Rhode Islanders. The British aggressively enforced their increasively expensive custom duties and the Rhode Islanders aggresively resisted the British.
In 1772 a group of Providence rebels captured and burned the HMS Gaspee. In 1773 the HMS Rose and 14 other warships shelled Bristol, while British naval forces regulary raided the coast and local shipping for food and supplies. In August 1775 the Rhode Island General Assembly had most of Jamestown livestock removed to relative safety of South Kingston. Around this same time Jamestown resident John Eldred, it is said, placed a cannon between two boulders overlooking East Pasge and fired occasionally at British ships passing by. On December 10-11, 1775, British mariners raided the small village at Jamestown. They burned almost all the houses along Narragansett Avenue, made off with available livestock, and effectively drove much of the population away.
The calamitous December raid, and realization that control of Conanicut Island could mean control of the bay, caused the colony to begin fortifying the island.
In January 1776 the General Assembly ordered 300 militiamen to Jamestown and, in May, voted to "employ a sufficient number of men to erect a fort at Beaver Tail, upon Conanicut to contain six or eight heavy canons". Shortly thereafter, on this site on Prospect Hill, troops erected an earthen gun battery with a commanding view of West Passage. The battery, probably crescent-shaped, took advantage of both height and slope of the terrain."
I completely agree with you on that point. France didn't provide military support to the colonists in North America simply to engage in "nation-building." And you can be sure of something else, too . . . if anyone in France had stood up and suggested that "British tyranny is a religion of peace," he would have been strung up and shot in Paris.
You're a Hamiltonian, too? Well, Merry Christmas anyway FRiend. 8^)
And to prove my point, my daughter is applying to (Jefferson's) University of Virginia.
( :-D
Good footnote. Thanks!
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I think we've repaid this debt to France.
Twice. And then some.
Thanks for remembering Comte de Grasse's fleet. My ancestor was a young patriot and he served as a pilot on de Grasse's fleet.
Yes, well I think that falls under the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We fought France under the British flag during the French and Indian war and then we fought against the British in Revolutionary war and then when Major General Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794,the British were backing and inciting the Indians to riot and to kill and take Americans as hostages. I had forgotten about the Quasi war...the undeclared war fought entirely at sea.
could you check post 29 and see if I missed anything?
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